My cat is almost 3 years old now and is without question my best friend. I love him so much and know he loves me too, and I could never, ever live without him. Sometimes I will spend hours crying because I am so overwhelmed by the fact that he will die someday, even though he is very young and in perfect health,...

Answers

Get yourself some goldfish. They will teach you more about life and death than your cat possibly can.

Our cats are about 15 years old, which is doing pretty well for cats that live outdoors all the time. Our previous cats made it to nearly 20.

Your cat will live a long time, ten years or more as you mention, and a lot can happen in ten years. You might even get a horse (they live beyond 30, sometimes) or a macaw or an African Grey parrot. A parrot can possibly outlive you.

Meanwhile, get into something else, such as reading books about horses. My personal belief is that horses can improve us all. Get yourself all the books you can find about horses, fiction and non-fiction. Read them all. Read the best ones three times. Once you have some understanding of horses, go and volunteer to help at a horse stable somewhere. Horses need to be brushed or exercised or walked about. There is always something that needs to be shoveled.

I call this "the pleasure of self-indulgently wallowing in misery." Is this what you WANT? To sit around being miserable over something as ordinary as "Cats don't live forever"?

If you find yourself unable to change your behavior on your own, then get help. Finding a counselor or adviser, especially a professional psychologist, would be best, but there are also support groups and self help books.